Do This, Kill Food Cravings

The trick you can use anywhere

Eat every four hours, fill yourself with fiber, and never skip breakfast. All three tips can help curb cravings, but they're far from foolproof. In part, that's because of just how intense a craving can be: By definition, these yearnings are more intense than ordinary decisions—often meaning you'll go out of your way to satisfy them. Fortunately, new research offers yet another suggestion to nip cravings in the bud.

In a study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, researchers conducted four experiments testing the relationship between cognitive load—the quantity of tasks imposed on your working memory—and temptations. As it turns out, recognizing an item as appealing to you (say, a steaming plate of food) requires cognitive resources. But when your mind is already busy with some other task, the experiments found, you’re less likely to notice temptations around you.

“We need to acknowledge that our cravings are not about actual deprivation, and that we ‘feed’ them with our own thinking,” says study author Lotte Van Dillen, PhD, an assistant professor at Leiden University in the Netherlands. “By blocking this vicious thinking cycle, we cut off cravings at the pass."

Try to think of cravings as one part temptation and one part habit, says Marcia Pelchat, PhD, a food psychologist and associate member at the Monell Chemical Senses Center. If you head for the bowl of chocolates as soon as you enter the house, that's an automatic behavior—one you associate with, perhaps, getting home from work. “That’s why being distracted from these thoughts or cues in your environment can keep a craving from starting in the first place,” she says.

So what kind of activities can keep your mind off food? “Any task that creates some sort of flow, engages our full attention, and is experienced as joyful,” Van Dillen suggests. Make a list of 10 or 20 options you can choose from when temptation hits: Knit, play a smartphone game, read a magazine, check your favorite website...you get the drift.

And remember that this has nothing to do with deprivation, and everything to do with small changes. “It all goes back to want versus need,” Pelchat says. “Make one little change at a time and you’ll gradually kick those habits.”